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Social media is essential for advisors who want to connect with customers online, to create brand recognition and to contribute financial literature to a space accessible to the masses. Myself and many of the other ProducersWEB contributors constantly sing social media’s praises. That’s why I was shocked to read a blog in Huffington Post today titled “Is Social Media Dying?”

The writer, Daniel Burrus, first cites Facebook’s recent initial public offering (IPO), including its initial trading problems and it’s less than encouraging revenue potential. Facebook reported that its net income fell 12 percent in the first quarter of the year, and in May its stock closed below its IPO price, according to an article on ABC News.

Burrus asks, “Is this a game-changer, in a negative way, for other IPOs in the social media space? Will this slow the growth of social media?”

His next line says, “The answer is no.” Phew.

He goes on to explain that this is just a hiccup for social media. It will continue in all of its glory as a business tool. Why? Because Facebook only represents one piece of the social media pie, says Burrus. It represents the social networking category of social media, whereas sites like LinkedIn represent professional networking and sites like FourSquare represent geosocial networking. Other kinds of social media, according to Burrus, are blogs (i.e. Wordpress), photo sharing (i.e. Instagram) and video sharing (i.e. Vimeo and YouTube).

“So Facebook is not the king of social media,” posits Burrus. “It's the current king of social networking within the world of social media … The key question is, can they manage that without sacrificing trust and the user experience and making their users decide to go somewhere else to do their sharing?”

Based on a survey that the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) just conducted, the answer to that question is also no.

The survey reveals that Facebook received an overall satisfaction score of 61 out of 100, ranking lower than Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. Ouch. This score was fourth-lowest among 230 companies surveyed, and the lowest among internet companies. Another ouch.

Speculation about why Facebook scored so low suggests that people don’t like the new Timeline (and the fact that you don’t have another option) or the lack of privacy on the site. Some say it’s because Facebook mobile apps are too slow.

Despite the complaints about Facebook, though, ACSI points out that the sheer monopoly power of Facebook will keep it thriving no matter what. An article on Syracuse.com quotes ACSI’s statement that “There are currently no alternatives in scope and size to Facebook....As such, switching costs in time and inconvenience are so high that many users continue to accept something with which they are not all that satisfied rather than start over on another social network.”

I recently posted a blog about how so many advisors don’t have Facebook, and now I’m starting to understand why they don’t. Tell me though, if you don’t use Facebook, then what’s the alternative?

The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of ProducersWEB.

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